In the United States, an emergency information notification system called EAS (Emergency Alert System) is available, making it possible to quickly notify various emergency information such as meteorological disaster information, terrorism information, and other emergency evacuation information by using this EAS.
It should be noted that among emergency information notified by EAS is emergency information of a variety of levels including messages from President and other national level notices or local notices of a state or local government level.
In order to guarantee the reliability of this emergency alert system (EAS), it is mandatory to conduct a test at each level.
For example, state and county level tests are conducted on a weekly or monthly basis.
Also, a nationwide test was carried out on Nov. 9, 2011 as a national level test.
The tests of this emergency information notification system (EAS) are defined by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
However, the tests of the emergency information notification system (EAS) that complies with the current regulations are not designed to confirm the reliable notification of emergency information to user terminals serving as real-life endpoints of emergency information such as TVs owned by respective individuals.
The communication tests that comply with the current regulations are tests that confirm whether or not an emergency signal was delivered to broadcasting stations scheduled to deliver data to user terminals without delivering an emergency information signal to the user terminals.
Today, efforts are in full swing to develop and standardize one-way communication from transmission apparatuses such as broadcasting stations and other content servers to reception apparatuses such as TVs, PCs, and mobile terminals by using broadcasting wave and so on or two-way communication via a network such as the Internet, and systems that send and receive broadcasting programs and other content by using one-way communication.
It should be noted that PTL 1 (JP 2014-057227A) is among prior arts that disclose technologies for realizing data delivery via broadcasting wave and networks, for example.
ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) 2.0 is available as a standard on data delivery systems via broadcasting wave and network in the United States. Further, the standardization of ATSC 3.0 is underway at present.
ATSC 3.0 considers a configuration in which a reception apparatus receives ATSC broadcasting-compliant AV segments and signaling data having control information stored therein and realizes reproducing of broadcasting content based on various control in accordance with signaling data. The reception apparatus has an ATSC 3.0-supporting physical layer (ATSC-PHY) and middleware implemented therein that handle broadcasting reception processes.
Specifically, for example, the configuration under study allows for a broadcasting content output process using so-called client applications, application programs used on the Internet and so on, in an ‘as-is’ fashion and data processing using a variety of applications provided by broadcasting wave and so on.
ATSC 3.0 whose standardization is advancing is premised on the use of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), a next-generation emergency information notification system.
This Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) is configured to send a data file that complies with the CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) format for transporting emergency information or a file equivalent thereto and an application to user terminals (e.g., TVs) so as to permit data analysis, selection of necessary information and output of the information on the user terminal side rather than delivering emergency information from broadcasting stations to all user terminals (e.g., TVs) at once and causing all the user terminals to output the same emergency information as has been done up to now.
Various additional information related to emergency information is attached to the CAP message, a data file that complies with the CAP format. Additional information includes not only an emergency message output on the reception apparatuses but also various attribute information of emergency information such as emergency information category, emergency information urgency and sender information, and information related to regions to which emergency information needs to be notified.
The user terminals that have received the CAP message can output (display) information on them by analyzing the received CAP message and selecting necessary information in accordance with, for example, the category and the urgency of emergency information, the current locations of the user terminals, or the like.
In a case where such a CAP message is used, it is necessary to confirm whether or not emergency information was reliably output on the user terminals.
Therefore, the tests of the emergency information notification system (EAS) that comply with the current regulations are unable to confirm whether or not emergency information is reliably output from the user terminals, and it cannot be said that the tests are adequate for confirming the reliable notification of emergency information.